Electricity
by K. Elisabeth
Summary: With the proper conductor, an electric current will always flow. My tag for HitF, sort of. Oneshot, BB.


_I still believe in summer days  
The seasons always change  
And life will find a way_

_I'll be your harvester of light  
And send it out tonight  
So we can start again_

_Is love alive?  
Is love alive?  
Is love alive?_

_- Winter Song, Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles_

* * *

When he closed his eyes, he saw bright pink flares highlighting the center of his brain. When he opened them, it was his partner sitting on the barstool beside him with her legs crossed, drink in hand. There was a nearly inaudible clink as she tapped her pinkie nail against it, holding it out and staring into the amber liquid that sloshed around in the glass. Tiny ice cubes bobbed at the surface, begging for rescue.

"Are you alright?" she asked, breaking the silence that had settled between them. There was enough noise in the bar, even this late, to make up for their lack of words. He blinked hard, seeing the pink splotch float across his vision like a pastel butterfly, and nodded.

"Yep," he said casually, pressing the bottle to his lips and taking a long swig. "Great. Never been better." She gave him a peculiar look that seemed to sense his falseness, didn't call him out on it. Instead she just nodded, setting her glass down on the knotty pine bar and sliding off of the stool.

"I'll be right back," she said, heading in the direction of the ladies' room. He watched her round the corner, then turned his gaze towards the beer bottle standing in a patient, lonely way on the bar in front of him. He could see his warped reflection in the glass, his head shaped like a gourd of some kind, or maybe a pear—narrow at the top, then bulging out around the cheeks and chin. It made his eyes look squinted and narrow, and his lips fat and drooping. He lifted his head slightly and the image changed; dipped it, and it changed again.

Everything about him was warping, shifting, taking new shape. New socks, new ties, a new scar just now finally hidden by his newly grown-back hairline. Even the very center of his brain, the center of his being, was firing in new, unpredictable ways. How could he know anything, be sure of anything he felt, when he still didn't even know who he was? When little things like clowns and socks and belt buckles turned him into a man he did not recognize, didn't even realize was missing? That sense of unpredictability, of not knowing the one truth he should know better than any other, was turning him over inside—was making him feel pear-shaped. Not just the man he saw in his reflection, but the man he felt inside—or rather, was looking for.

He shut his eyes and picked up the bottle, taking another sip. He heard Cam's words echo through his bright pink brain. _If you crack that shell and you change your mind, she'll die of loneliness before she'll trust anyone ever again._ He was so sure he knew. But when he awoke from his coma, he had been so sure that was real too. What could he be sure of, when his own brain was damaged, temporarily or irrevocably? If psychologists could plant false memories and one slip of a neurosurgeon's scalpel in the wrong section of the brain could permanently change a person's personality, who's to say what's real? How could he know that feeling, that fluttering burn, wasn't exactly what Sweets had said it was—just a bright pink flare of electricity on a brain scan, like symmetrical butterfly wings. How could he know that everything he felt, so truly and undoubtedly in his heart, wasn't just a figment of a mental storm brewing in his core?

Whether he loved her or not—which he was sure he did, but that was beside the point at the moment—the last thing he wanted to ever do was to hurt her. And what if that electrical pulse, that static flaring through his grey matter, did stop? What if, like all the other changes to his brain—like the poor memory and the slurred speech and the boring FBI-issue socks—that slowly died as well? What if he had fallen in love with a figment of his comatose imagination, and it was only a matter of time until the deepest reaches of his brain realized that wasn't a reality? The questions were unbearable, nearly as much as the answers. To be so unsure of himself was immensely unsettling, and it made him grimace, squeezing his eyes shut until a light other than that searing pink popped in the darkness.

"Booth, are you sure you're okay?" He snapped his eyes open and saw her standing next to him at the bar, leaning in on her elbow with her brows furrowed.

"Yeah," he lied. "Just a headache, is all." He thought this would assuage her concerned look, but instead her frown grew deeper.

"Your head hurts? Where? When did that start?"

"No, it's not bad, don't worry," he said, shaking his head and unable to help the grin that touched his face. He laid down a few bills on the counter and picked her coat up off the back of her barstool, holding it out for her to slip her arms into. "It's just tension. It's been a long day." She nodded in agreement, seeming satisfied with his answer.

He held the door open for her as they stepped out into the brisk September night, feeling the first touches of fall in the air. They wandered down the sidewalk together, as they had parked down the block and around the corner, and Booth looked up vaguely at the tops of the small trees planted into the edge of the sidewalk. Soon the leaves would begin to turn, bright yellows and reds and oranges. The trees would release them and they would gather in piles, cluttering the gutters. They would fade to brown and curl up, crunching underfoot like discarded trash, their brilliance only a memory.

Brennan's hand brushed up against his as they walked, transmitting a static shock between their fingers. He jumped at the sensation, tingling running up the hairs in his forearm. He looked down at her and she grinned sheepishly, rubbing the shock out of her own delicate skin.

"Sorry," she said. "The air is drying, it increases the likelihood of experiencing an electric shock from a collection of electrons on…"

"It's fine, Bones," he said, shaking his head and draping his arm around her shoulder.

"It will change," she said after a quiet moment. He looked down at her peculiarly, having already started thinking about something entirely different.

"What?" he asked.

"After fall and winter," she said. "When the humidity returns to the air, you're less likely to experience electric shock. It can happen, but it's much less likely. You'd have to have a strong conductor in order to experience that level of electrons collecting in one place."

"Right," he said with a smile. She sighed, then leaned her head against his shoulder briefly. He could smell her hair, and he remembered it. He loved that smell—of her, not just the shampoo. Even if they had been digging up bodies all day or slogging knee-deep through slime, he still loved the way she smelled when she got close.

And then it struck him, like an electrical current running through his brain. He had always loved that smell. And he always would.


End file.
